BELSHAZZAR (Greek and Vulgate version; Heb. Bēl-Šar-Šar, from Assyrian Bēl-Šar-Ṣur: "Bel protects the king"). - King of the Neo-Chaldean dynasty, known to us from the prophet Daniel and from the quasi-Danielic paraphrase of Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud., X, 231-48).
At the opulent banquet, laid out by B. for a thousand nobles, the sacred vessels of the destroyed temple of Jerusalem were profaned, and the terrified king saw the fingers of a mysterious hand write on the wall opposite the words Mane Thecel Phares (v.), with which God foretold the imminent end of the king and of the kingdom, at the hands of the Medo-Persians. This came to pass on that very night (Dan. 5). In the 1st and 3rd year of B.'s reign (Dan. 7, 1; 8, 1), Daniel had the visions concerning the four great empires of the world, the messianic kingdom, and the vicissitudes of the dominion of the Diadochi and Epigoni.
Daniel does not contradict history by placing B. as the last Babylonian king. The Babylonian Chronicle known as "of Nabonidus" and the Cyrus Cylinder name only Nabonidus (Nabunaid, 556-39) (v.); however, a cuneiform inscription from Ur bears a supplication of Nabonidus to the god Sin, to obtain his protection for himself and for his firstborn son Bēl-far-uşur; the latter is identified with the "son of the king" of whom the Chronicle of Nabonides speaks.
If the extrabiblical documents are silent about B.'s royal dignity, everything leads one to hold that his father had associated him in the kingdom from as early as 542. From cuneiform inscriptions it is known that Nabonides was unfit for government, cared only about collecting Chaldean deities in the capital (Babel), and around the 7th year, whether from a strange religious inclination or because he was forced to, withdrew to Temâ, an isolated locality of northern Arabia. And Daniel (5:7, 16), relating that B. had promised the third place in the kingdom to whoever succeeded in interpreting the writing on the wall, hints that the first and second places were occupied by the father and the son.
According to the Chronicle of Nabonides, on the 14th of the month of Tishri, Sippar on the Euphrates was occupied by Cyrus. Nabonides, who was shut up there, fled toward Babel, which Gubaru (= Darius the Mede of Daniel), governor of the Gutium and head of an army of Cyrus, conquered two days later. Nabonides is captured and relegated to Carmania; while B., according to Dan. 5:30, is slain. In all likelihood B. at Babel not only replaced his parent in the government of the empire, but presided over the very defense of the capital. Xenophon, Cyropaedia, VII, 5, § 15, and Herodotus, I, 191, perhaps also allude to his fatal banquet.
That in Dan. 5:2, 11, 13, 22, B. is called son of Nebuchadnezzar can be explained by the fact that in the Semitic languages there is no special term to indicate "descendant," while the word "son" is of very broad use and meaning (also grandson or descendant, any successor whatsoever). It seems that Daniel preferred, to that of the father, noted for his incapacity, the name of the predecessor who was a famous statesman and warrior. It could also be that B. was a true grandson of Nebuchadnezzar (d. 562). Since it is not easy to prove the existence of a blood relationship between Nabonides and Nebuchadnezzar, some hold that the former married a daughter of the latter; this nevertheless remains a pure hypothesis.
Bibliography4 works
Ermenegildo Florit